Last weekend, Gabrovo Bread House and Social Enterprise participated in an eco-sustainability festival at Uzana in Central Bulgaria, selling home-made bread and promoting the concept of slow food. During the festival, the team also had the chance to talk to local bakers and festival-goers about their opinion of bread. Let’s take a look at what they said:
“I love bread, especially white bread. My mother and sister sometimes bake bread at home. The idea of bread-making workshop is great and I’d love to join!” – Stefan, South of Uzana
“Yes I love bread and my favorite is black wheat bread. I sometimes bake bread with my family. I think bread-making workshops are great and it’s good for people in the community.” – Dora, Gabrovo
“We eat bread every day. We usually just buy it from the shops because we don’t have time to make our own bread. If time permits, we would definitely love to join the bread-making workshops.” – Savina and Miro, Sofia
“I eat bread every day and I try to bake my own bread if I have enough time. It’s healthier because you know what’s inside the bread.” – Tanya, Pleven
“I bake bread with my mother. We sing songs when making bread, infusing positive energy inside the bread and passing on love to whoever eats it.” – Iliana, Pleven
We also had the chance to speak with John Mulrow, business/industrial sustainability specialist and featured speaker at the Uzana Fest. They exchanged ideas about eco-sustainability and slow food, which has definitely provided lots of insights for the future work of Bread House.
Q: What is your definition of eco-sustainability?
A: The quantitative definition is the regenerative bio-capacity of the earth divided by the global population. Everyone should have a fair share of the earth and no individual is allowed to consumer more than this number, which is called the global hectare.
Q: How do you as an individual live a sustainable life?
A: I worked in Zambia and Southern Africa with the UN Refugee Agency for half a year. There were very few resources, but it was an awesome experience which makes me realize that one can do a lot with very little. However, this kind of lifestyle had not been possible when I returned to the United States, but I have picked up some good habits such as using handkerchiefs and biking instead of driving. I realize that I have to stop being an “eco-virtuist” and doing everything right in my daily life, but doing things that the system allows me doing easily. It’s all about striking a balance between living your values and doing the work of changing the system.
Q: What is your opinion on slow food?
A: Slow food is a standard way of sharing values, rules and methodologies. But I sometimes feel that some slow food groups are more like “foodie groups”, like people of a different social class sitting together to enjoy good food.
Q: What do you think about the concept of Bread House?
A: Social enterprise is awesome and it would be great for everyone to eat real bread rather than the crappy bread from the grocery stores, but the amount of bread we need to offset the factory-made bread is incredible. But I think this model could scale up to that, with the collaboration of different parties.
